Tara Seshan
Product lead for ChatGPT Work at OpenAI; previously one of the first five product managers at Stripe, head of product at Watershed, and a Thiel Fellow.
Tara Seshan did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
Tell me when they publish
How you hear about it
- Email meSign in and we will email you when they publish
- Put it in my ppll feedSign in to follow them
- Send it to my reader appAn Atom feed of everything on this page. No account, nothing to sign up for.
https://ppll.app/tara-seshan/feed.xml
What they believe
-
However much theorizing is done before shipping, nothing compares to the evidence of users trying a product and iterating from there.
there's a lot of like theorizing that one can do before you ship something but nothing compares to like the actual empirical evidence of seeing users try it, use it, and then iterating from there.
youtube.comSaid 10 Sept 2026This on korrents
-
In a fast-changing AI market, being prolific and empirical matters far more than being academic or theoretical.
And so actually being prolific and being um more like empirical is way more important than being um like maybe more academic or theoretical.
youtube.comSaid 30 Aug 2026This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 28 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
However much theorizing is done before shipping, nothing compares to the evidence of users trying a product and iterating from there.
there's a lot of like theorizing that one can do before you ship something but nothing compares to like the actual empirical evidence of seeing users try it, use it, and then iterating from there.
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
AI products should probably aim at where the models will be in two to three months, neither anchored in the present nor futuristic and unusable.
probably most importantly in this era is this aiming for 2 to 3 months of like where the models will be rather than being overly anchored in the present or being overly like futuristic and unusable.
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
Whether to build one agent or many depends far more on the use case and its practical considerations than on philosophy.
there there are philosophical things one could have and opine on in this topic but to me there are just so many practical product considerations like the use case matters so much in deciding this.
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
Show 25 more
Beyond user empathy and systems thinking, building agents needs a relentlessness to try things and keep iterating.
the third thing that you just really need in addition to user empathy and systems thinking is like a relentlessness to like try it out and keep iterating
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
For a product person working with AI research, learning to write good evals is the most important thing.
learning how to write good evals and writing evals as much as possible is like the most important thing
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
Building exactly for today means being left behind; the ideal horizon is two to three months.
and then at the same time if you build exactly for today you're going to get left behind. So it's like I constantly repeat this but it's like two to three months out.
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
How far ahead to plan depends on the pace of the market a business is in; in some markets it may be appropriate to plan many months out.
maybe it is appropriate to plan you know many many months out but I think it involves understanding like the pace of the market you're in
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
When an agent acts semi-autonomously, a user must be able to predict at any point what a feature will probably do.
now if the you know agent is doing things semi-autonomously like you actually really need to make sure that at any given point a user can like predict what is probably going to happen with a feature or a primitive that you're introducing.
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
The usual PM craft still applies, but testing things empirically and moving faster matter more than ever.
all the usual stuff still applies except the importance of testing things empirically and moving faster has only increased.
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
Product people should be in direct contact with their users.
of course you should be in direct contact with your users.
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
Voice is such an intuitive interface for so many people that it changes the game.
the existence of voice like changed the game like it is such an intuitive interface for so many people.
Stop planning for 2027: how OpenAI builds product 90 days at a time | Tara Sesha and Nan Yu (OpenAI) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026) Said 10 Sept 2026
In a fast-changing AI market, being prolific and empirical matters far more than being academic or theoretical.
And so actually being prolific and being um more like empirical is way more important than being um like maybe more academic or theoretical.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
The most important thinking a product manager does is defining the core hypothesis as pointedly as possible.
And what that means is the thinking you need to do is being as pointed as possible about what your core hypothesis is. And that hypothesis definition is the most important thing.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
The core of product management has always been finding the most essential question to ask about a product.
But the core of it has always been about what is like the most essential question you need to ask about your product. Like what is the thing that will determine whether your product works or doesn't work?
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
Work will increasingly look like steering rather than rowing, with agents doing the rowing.
I do think that increasingly the future of work will look more like steering than rowing in the sense that there will be agents that you'll you'll be able to work with that do a lot of the rowing and your role increasingly becomes steering the ship in the right direction and pointing it in the right direction.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
People may underrate the power of intuition and of deciding what they want the future to be.
I think sometimes that we underrate like that power of like intuition or even um sort of like positive like determinism of what we want the future to be like.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
Working with agents should ideally feel like a multiplayer game, with people steering their agents together.
Ideally, work feels like a multiplayer game where all of us together are getting stuff done, steering our agents as our agents continue to take care of more and more of those like rowing tactical tasks.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
Prosaic work on data access and cloud infrastructure matters, in some ways, as much as intelligence for making agents effective.
but a lot of it is also just really tactical like data access like cloud infrastructure and reliability pieces that feel um yeah, they feel much more prosaic than some of the the broader intelligence questions, but matter in some ways just as much for end effectiveness.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
With AI tools, ambitions are no longer limited by what a person can execute or communicate themselves.
Your ambitions are no longer limited by like what you're capable of executing yourself, what you're capable of communicating.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
Part of a product manager's job now is to elevate everyone's ambitions.
Um, part of your job now is to elevate everyone's ambitions and say, "Actually, isn't the possibility ceiling meaningfully higher?"
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
Building for where AI models are now and building for where they will be in a year are equally wrong.
You fail if you build for where the models are now. You fail if you build for where you think the models will be in a year. Like both outcomes are equally wrong.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
When there is real conviction that a product is transformative, getting it into users' hands is far better than waiting until it is perfect.
But I think what's been really compelling and interesting about this era and this product experience has been getting the product in the hands of users when you have so much conviction that hey it's transformative like is way better than perfect and that urgency and that uh introduction of that product is is so important.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
Humans will continue to be most valuable as the ones accountable for an outcome.
I think humans will continue to be most valuable as a certainly as a um like an entity of accountability.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
The human brain will remain valuable in how people care for and relate to one another.
Um I also think the human brain continues to be valuable in like how we care for each other and relate to one another.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
AI should be used as much as possible for writing as reporting, but should not replace writing as thinking.
I think you should use the models as much as possible for writing as reporting and in as much as you think with writing as I really do and I think a lot of people do you should not use it you shouldn't replace your thinking with it
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
Something people can try, or results from a test, communicates a direction far better than a document.
I have like results where we tried this, we ran an AB, here's like the results. This is why I think we should like go in this direction. That is a way better communication tool than like the the doc itself.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
Unlike code, an agent's knowledge work cannot be judged by its output alone; the process, inputs and reasoning have to be examined too.
But knowledge work is different in that I can't simply look at the deck in the end and see the numbers. Oh, it's like 90% success or whatever in the deck and actually believe that. I really need to think about the process and the inputs and the reasoning and how it went along the way.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
People should make software that exactly meets their own and their friends' needs.
It is exactly what I think the future should be which is people should make software that exactly meets their and their friends needs.
AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead) Said 30 Aug 2026
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Where they publish
Newsletter Working Assumptions Her Substack newsletter, Working Assumptions.
Link verified 1 Oct 2026.
x.com @tarstarr Her X account.
Link verified 1 Oct 2026.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.